Sunday, November 16, 2014

Today's Jack Kelly column - "Jack Kelly / VOTE FRAUD IS NOT IMAGINARY Yet Democrats keep trying to dismiss it" relies fairly heavily on a study that was published in the Washington Post about non-citizen's voting. I, as one might guess, copied his snarky style in my comment to point out that this study is one of a kind, and relies on data even one or the studies authors admits is fairly suspect. Here is my comment, copied from the PG comment section of Kelly's column (with a little editing).

If you Google "Jesse Richman and David Earnest:, you will indeed find the Washington Post piece where there talk about their findings. You will also find, a few items down, a fact checking piece from the Reno Gazette-Journal on those findings. That Reno piece discusses how various researchers have questioned Mr Richman's and Mr Earnest's study, and indeed how even Mr Richman concedes the data set is not very good. For example it turns out that people who responded in a similar study who listed themselves as non-citizens had in prior years called themselves citizens. The fact checking article gave the study a four out of ten, and Richman agreed with that rating.

That was Jack Kelly's smoking gun. He could have mentioned the doubts about the research, not to mention pointing out this was the only study of its type, but he chose to make his own assertions and accusations. I read at least once about some state out west where Republican local election officials were throwing out absentee ballots from Democratic voters, and the Republican Secretary of State in that state declined to investigate (even though it was caught on film). But Jack Kelly couldn't be bothered to look into that.

Mr Kelly quotes "a friend in Chicago" as hard evidence of vote fraud. But the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could not come up with even one allegation, let alone any convictions for vote fraud in the last ten years in Pennsylvania (when it was defending it's new voter ID law in the State Supreme Court, a case it lost). Just because Republicans/Conservatives scream over and over again about something, that repetition does not make it true.